Integral9

I'm gonna say it'll cost between $10k and $30k for a whole house solar setup depending on wattage. Whole house 7KW generator about $3k installed.

For best results, use the most power efficient power head you can find / have on hand. least wattage per gph. The mag series are not that great. eg: With a 1000VA UPS, I could run the following for about 2 hours: 2 x MJ600, 1 Aquaclear 50, 1 Aquaclear 75. When I plugged in the MJ600, the "time remaining" on the UPS was still checking in at about 400minutes. When I plugged in teh Aquaclears, the time remaining dropped to about 100 minutes. edit: I was able to keep my fish alive in my 135 w/ the aquaclears and the fish alive in my 30g qt, with the 2 mj600s. So you don't really need alot, just enough to keep the water moving slightly and oxygenated. Depending on the extent of the down time, it really doesn't have to be running all the time. eg: I ran my powerheads for a couple of hours twice day. That got me through 48 hours w/out power.

It's Candy Land!

The problem I see is that not every country in the Carribean is participating in this. Bonaire in particular, won't even let you go near the water w/ a spear gun. They ask that you tag the location you see them. I don't know how that's effective; seems more like organized littering to me.

That's it. Maybe the post office has moved. It used to be on your left in the corner of the strip mall if you are looking at the LFS.

I put a piece of egg crate (8"x8") in my fuge to give the macro more stuff to grown on. I set it right in front of the inlet give it maximum flow. I'm not sure, but would that count as ATS? So far it's working great and growing algea very well. I can pull out several cups of algea almost every week.

I caugh my the powder brown last night and acclimated him and put him into QT. I didn't see any other infections in the tank so I am hoping the other fish can hold it off. To catch the fish I had to build a screen out of egg crate and use it divide the tank so I could corner the powder brown. Unfortunately, I also had to take out most of the rock on that side of the tank and now my aquascape is a disaster. :-( I spent about 3 hours trying to put it back together w/out success, so now I am just trying to make an aquascape I can live with. Also, in the process of trying to re-aquascape, rockslide, and I broke off a frag worthy piece of pink poci and a tiny bit of neon green staghorn. Although I think there is more, just hiding in the sand bed. But I had enough bristle worm bristles in my fingers by that point and I didn't want to go digging in the sand bed anymore. So I will tackle that again tonight. Sorry guys, but I didn't feel like taking a tank pic after all that, it's hideous anyway. I'll put up a pic after I get the rocks stacked up again.

That's the one by the Post Office right? If so, my mom takes my kid to Gymboree next door when she watches him and he always asks her to "go fish store?" afterwards. I'll see if she can pick me up some. Thanks for the offer though.

Try Sterling Glass, in Sterling. They are just south of Rt 7 on Cascades Pwky. But you can use 1/8" acryllic for baffles. Just don't be stingy w/ the silicon so it holds strong. when I did my baffles, I just used lots of tape for a clean finish and to hold the baffle in place while I siliconed it in. I also started with the center baffle because I was putting the baffles more or less in the center of the sump. But similar to Origami's process, marking the outside is critical and try to make sure the lines are || and plumb. Once I got the center baffle done, I let it dry for an hour and then started on the two outside baffles. But only siliconed the outside of the outer baffles. Then once it had a chance to set (about an hour) I put a huge goup of the silicone on my finger and just ran it down the inside of the baffles. It took several goups actually. but once it started to harden, I pulled the tape up and let it finish curing. After a couple of days it was ready to go after a quick rinse from the hose and then drying it out with some paper towels. My finished product. Key to sucess: Lots and lots of tape. use a lot of tape.

Thanks for the link. Great price and great website. Lots of info about UV there.

I'll see if I can find some of those. Did you get them at a bait shop or something? I haven't seen those at my LFSs.

I have one infected in my DT, a Powder Brown. the hippo is waiting for company in my QT. I have been down this road before, a couple of times. I am trying to be gentle about catching him, but he is still acting very healthy, swimming very fast, feisty and evasive. I have some egg crate i use to divide the tank for catch fish like this though. it's a process, so it takes time which is why i haven't done it yet. I plan to give it a shot tonight, but we'll see how much time I have left after i put my kid to bed.

Looks like you got a couple of fish with ich; me too! welcome to the CLUB! (High Five!) I am trying to catch my powder brown so i can start the hypo treatment on them both. He is proving to be quite evasive. I would do the same for the ich infected fish you have. I'd offer you some room in my QT, but a 30g w/ a hippo and PB is already really close quarters. I might have to deploy the "great wall" (egg crate) to keep them separated. They did seem to get along ok in my DT though. I hope they are still cool with each other. However for the other fish, I don't see much wrong with them. abraisions on the body could be from the mating process as well as the marks on the head. The pop-eye is most likely the result of the shipping process. I think in most cases, both should go away in QT with good foods and vitamins. However, I don't have much experience with pop-eye.

Wow, I didn't realize I had let this go almost 9 months w/out an update. If any of you have seen my other posts you know that I am dealing with a couple of problems. The biggest atm is a couple of tangs w/ ich. A hippo and a powder brown. No shocking result there though. I kind of expected it to be honest. I caught the hippo, no problem. However the powder brown is proving to be quite evasive. I am going to have to take some rocks out and get serious about cornering it for capture. Fortunately, I have not seen any signs of the infection my other fish. I keep checking them though. I really hope I don't have to capture my firefish, assessor or randal's goby. I would probably have to take out all my rock to do that. My CBB, which wasn't eating in QT is still not eating prepared foods. However, it has eliminated all the aiptasia and continues to just swim around the tank picking at all the rock. I haven't seen any ich on it and it seems to be doing well. I hope my pod population will continue to keep it fed, but I'd like to add a mandarin to the tank one day and I'm not sure if the pod population can sustain 2 fish, including a CBB. I have offered the CBB just about all kinds of frozen foods including: mysis, baby brine, brine, clams, shrimp, blood worms. Any ideas? I am to the point where I am about to just keep offering it the mix of frozen foods I have until it starts eating them or I have to find it a new home. As for the tank build, I removed the hood over my tank and purchased a hanging kit and suspended the light from the ceiling. I also bought some DIY screens and made screen top covers for the top of my tank. I don't know what I am going to do with the hood. I don't really have a place to store it. I thought I might use it to mount some LEDs in, but I think I would need to mount the LEDs further away from the tank than the hood will allow. Anyone looking for a low profile oak hood with a cherry stain (72 x 18) with vents on the top and open in the back? Any light you put under it would site about 1-2 inches above the top of the tank at the most. It's a nice top, but it's not easy to get into the tank with it. I have several corals in the tank now. Mostly frags growing out, but I have mounted a couple of SPS. a Pink Poci colony that was dying off in my old tank, is completely turned around. I also have a green stag horn that I got to encrust on the rock nearby. I think the two will make a nice contrast with each other. I'll see if I can get a full tank shot tonight and post it up.

Update: (winning & losing) The cholerpa is all but gone. Tangs ate that up like it was going out of style. The finger algea is retreating too, so Yeah! But my hippo and powder brown have ich now. Boooo. I really hate that parasite.

I love my Reef Keeper.

I recommend removing any rubber gaskets and any rubber pieces on the impellers and setting them aside before soaking. I left my Mag 5 in a bucket of straight vinegar for a couple of days (first time it was cleaned in years) and when I tried to put it back together, the gasket which came off fine, had lost it's elasticity and became brittle. I think the vinegar dried it out, not sure what muriatic acid would do. Probably more of the same. In an effort to keep everything together, I just threw it all into the bucket after disassembling the pump. Oh well. Never used it as an external power head as it leaked on day 1.

If you garage is climate controlled, I'd use the wall adjoining the garage and then use the garage as my fish room. If it were my house, I'd do a built-in cube tank in the wall ajoining the garage at the corner where the hallway empties into the rec' room. You'd have 2 sides of the tank to look at and you could use your garage as the fish room. If it's not climate controlled, I think I'd be asking myself how much I really need a bathroom on that floor or how much it would take to climate control the garage.... fwiw: with a 135 and over 500W of lights over it, my basement can become a bit of a heat island in my house and it can get a little too humid for comfort down there.

The only difference between any of the plugs on the PC4 is 2 (middle ones) have solid state relays, while the other 2 have solenoid relays. I am baffled as to why a surge protection circuit is not included as well. Especially considering the kinds of power controllers I have at work that we use in our data center cost about as much as the RKL + PC4, and offer a wealth of added capabilities. Such as 8 outlets fully switched. 240v input. Network ready. manual overrides. etc.

iirc, the plug was ok, but like the rest of my house, is about 30 years old so it probably needs replacing. I used to run my 55g off that outlet and I didn't have any problems with it, but I also didn't have the PC4 back then.

Well, the issue isn't my lights. Phew. However, I think I have two separate issues. I was behind my tank on Sunday getting ready to hook up my USB module to do some monitoring as my fix for flickering worked, but the lights were still powering off completely during the day, and the lights went out. So I looked at the PC4 and the dang thing had completely powered off. Then it powered back on, did it's little self check and re-established comms with the control unit and turned back on. I hadn't even touched the PC4 yet when it happened, so unless my presense caused it malfunction (which I doubt) I'm not sure what to think about that. I checked all the connections and they all seemed good so I think I'll contact Digital Aquatics about it. As for the flickering, I was on the DA forums and I found some posts with the same issue with a pump on the same channel. Apparently some pumps (I think this applies to most pumps actually) cause a reverse voltage surge when they come on. This can leak into the other channels and with fluorescent lights, the ballasts can fire for a split sec and make the bulbs flicker. The simple fix is to put a surge suppressor between the pump and the power controller. <sigh> So I hung *another* surge suppressor off my power controller and I haven't noticed the flickering anymore.

I shouldn't be pulling too much from the PC4 outlets. The circuits on the light are for: 4 x 39W (160W total), 4 x 39W (160W total), and 6 x 39W (240W total). The digital relays are rated up to 8A ea. (960W) and the solenoid relays are rated up to 15A ea (1800w), however the entire power bar cannot handle more than 15A total, but then I wouldn't be getting anymore than that as the circuit is on a 15A breaker. My heaters are plugged into my DJ switch panel and not controlled by RK PC4s I have. They don't usually come on though, especially in the summer time. My tank's been running a little warm lately, tbh.

That's intersting. I did notice that one time when the light was off and flickered, it seemed to coincided with my ATO kicking on. Same PC4, different outlet. I'll test that tonight and add that outlet to the log monitor as well.

I can plug in the USB adapter for my Reef Keeper and monitor the power consumption on the circuits with my laptop, but I will have to run that for a full day and then look at the logs to see what happening. I am not typically around when the lights do their thing during the day. Although, my in-laws who watch my kid during the day have told me that they have noticed it as well. I do not have a separate control line to the ballasts, although I think the light has an input for one, iirc. The switch on the light is set to the on position so that when the Reef Keeper turns on the outlets the lights are plugged into, the lights come on. Depending on what happens with the logs I'll see if I can dig up my outdoor timers and set the lights up on those and see if the problem persists.

A couple of months ago I noticed that the lights on my tank would go off for a few seconds then come back on at seemingly random intervals, usually several hours a part. I figured a temp sensor was tripping so I bought a hanging kit and took the lights out from under my hood and hung them from the ceiling. Unfortunately, that did not solve the problem. I cannot find anything wrong with the fixture, both fans work and come on and there isn't any blockage in the vents and I have not modified the fixture at all. The other night while the lights were off, I noticed the lights flicker, like someone had flipped the switch really fast. Kind of looked like a lighting flash in the tank. Pretty cool I thought, but what the heck is causing that? the circuit is in the off position, or it's supposed to be. The light is plugged into a Digital Aquatics PC4 and that is on a separate circuit from the rest of my tank. When I first plugged the light in last September, and I did not know this at the time, but fluorescent ballasts leak a small amount of current and that can cause a GFI to trip. Apparently there is enough fluorescent ballasts in that light to cause a GFI to trip, so there is no GFI on it. I discovered that the first day I plugged it in. The PC4 it's plugged into has 4 outlets, 2 solenoid relays and 2 digital relays. The light has 3 plugs, and I am using 1 solenoid relay and 2 of the digital relays. I am using the other solenoid relay to run the peristaltic pump for my ATO as it doesn't draw enough current to make the digital relays flip when told to. I bought the light new a year or more before actually getting to use it, so I am not sure if Aquactinics will offer me any support. Has anyone seen this problem before and resolved it? Any ideas to try?